Arsenal all-but stamped their ticket to the last-16 of the Champions League with a game to spare courtesy of a routine win over Dinamo Zagreb.
Declan Rice put the Gunners in front in just the second minute before Kai Havertz headed in a brilliant Gabriel Martinelli cross midway through the second half to secure the points, and Martin Odegaard put gloss on the result by adding a third in stoppage-time.
Arsenal remained third in the 36-team league table with 16 points, meaning only a heavy defeat against Girona next week coupled with victories for six of the chasing pack would see them slip out of the top eight, they aim to skip next month’s play-off round.
Dinamo went into the game with a new manager in Fabio Cannavaro and not having played a competitive game for a month due to the Croatian league’s winter break, Arsenal caught them cold after just 104 seconds by surgeing into a quickfire lead.
Martinelli attacked the left side and teed up Havertz in the area, who laid the ball off perfectly into the path of Rice who thundered a half-volley into the net to register his first Champions League goal, and Arsenal’s fastest in the competition for a decade.
